


A Happy Few

by billspilledquill



Category: Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jazz Age Writers RFP, The Great Gatsby (2013)
Genre: Alcoholism, Crack, Foreshadowing, Gen, Other, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-05 08:08:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16806748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/billspilledquill/pseuds/billspilledquill
Summary: As always, you go back to it.





	A Happy Few

**Author's Note:**

> This is weird please enjoy.

It ends. It all eventually ends.

You know, at some point in the middle, that you’re in the book. You know, because you have written one. You also have read one; one in a shelf, one in your mind’s eye. Book that makes you, and book that you made, crafted to make others. It’s a circle, at the end, and a tight one, at that.

Here: pages that dread your life and heart are those that people rejoice in. Your words dripping in ink, made to be remembered as you will slip into immortality. He will too, more than you, enjoy the spotlight.

And you think, looking at him sideways. You think: he has a pretty face. When this all ends, you want to take him away, New York has been like too important, too precocious for them. They cared too much about things that don’t matter.

What matters is fucking ugly, you think again. It drenched the soul out of them, smooth, quick-paced; like blues, like jazz. It’s the age of dreams. Maybe your wife would agree.

You sleep awake sometimes, just to see the mountains of dreams, if they are realized on those dark skies with little stars; the city lights up; a scream. So you watch him sleep, body convulsing by some terrible, terrible nightmares. You’re safe here, you tell him. We are safe here. And he ends in your arms, and it ends. God, you hope it ends.

“Have I not felt enough?” You ask, when he has all but collapsed after all that fear and memory and stupidity— “Have _we_ not known enough?”

You know it is supposed to be the end. A story ends eventually. Him being shot, him surviving. Either or. Him with eyes gleaming hope for the future. Maybe it ends with him reconciling with Daisy, maybe not; it ends with you watching along and ahead, in awe towards the early settlers, reflecting; Europe at the dawn of the Old World. But it doesn’t; it goes on. You are right, you‘re judging the book by its tragic cover.

And yet, looking at him, his smooth face jarred with deep, great circles under his eyes, you realize, once again, you are being confronted at something face to face incapable to comprehend: something commensurate to your capacity for wonder.

“You’re—“ you begin, gobsmacked. “Y-you’re—“

Gatsby leans toward you, his other deaf ear bandaged. That bullet grazed him this time, just below his ears. He is alive, and you’re too. He smiles, “I am. Tryingly so, old sport.”

You lean over too, as if they are conspiring for some godforsaken secret. “I meant to say that you’re mad.”

“What? My ears,” he says. “Forgive me.” His nose touches yours.

“You’re mad,” you state. “That’s what I said. What did you hear?”

He throws his head back, his brown hair tickling your cheek, setting them aflame. You repeat your question, but he already curling in himself, breaking in, laughing out. The hospital bed is very small, you notice as the bed shakes beneath them; and fragile, at that.

But Gatsby is falling fast asleep, his eyes wavering. He shakes his head, as if saying: I think of nothing.

In the distant voice of the past, you used to say so yourself: _I don’t suppose this is the way it should end_. As book goes, you’re in a very good one. As narrator, you wonder: _do we deserve an epilogue?_

You pick up the pen.

 _Gatsby_ , you write, sitting back on your chair. _Gatsby’s breath evens out. He lived, and slept. His movement and altitude that are so peculiarly American— that come, I suppose, with the absence of lifting work or rigid sitting in youth, and even more, with the formless grace from when we played our nervous, sporadic games._

You pause, looks back at him, afraid of being find out. A lot of people have written about him, you have seen it: journalists, writers, especially those with no money but a fancy for dreams. It’s the age of dreams, everyone closes their eyes for something greater than what is to come.

But Gatsby is sleeping in peace. So you turn back to the paper: _A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: ‘There are only the —_

A mumble. “What’re you doing?”

You shiver. Writing has never been a shame, but he makes you feel the acute sense of dread as if he is trying to gaze into your soul. Maybe he is. “There’s a sentence I’m trying to get out of my head.”

Silence. Covers shift. “Can I see?” He asks quietly.

He smiles when you let him. The one where he is deeply prejudiced in your favor. Even in the sequel of things, he hasn’t lost his previous glory.

Gatsby tilts his head, his eyes concentrating. There’s a more timid smile there, like he wouldn’t know what to say.

Suddenly you aren’t thinking of Daisy and Gatsby anymore, but of this clean, hard, limited notebook he has in his hands. After the end, this will be the only thing you will hold yourself to, you who dealt now in universal skepticism, who lean back when Gatsby rests his head in the circle of your arm. That sentence echoes again, but faintly.

You pursed this, this ending. Stretched your arms far and wide. This is the age of dreams. Black clouds overcrowding the tired and the busy, waiting for them to stop pursuing, and look. Look at the sky!

“It’s beautiful,” he comments. And you, with your eyes on the horizon, can see through that little white window. You nod. Color raises to his cheek, “You didn’t finish the sentence. It is for a book?”

You think about your wife, just a little. She is worried about him, being here with him and all. “A futile book,” you say.

“I would love to know the end of it,” he rasps out. You feel dizzy, drunk on the words your book couldn’t make let go: dreams, liquor, and the factiousness of life. Enchanted by it, in and out; in and out.

“You wouldn’t,” you say. “That’s the whole main point of the book, old sport.”

You blink, tears blinding your view. Everything is so, so white. A little green dot, there. Someone snatches it.

“Stop staring at the bottom of your bottle,” Zelda says. “It won’t solve anything.”

You grin, dazed at her beauty after so many years. “It does, darling.”

“Whose, then?” She crosses her arms, rolling her eyes. She can do both splendidly. “I swear your head is full of wine.”

“Look, here.” You point at the stack of paper in front of you, words that are in your head, in your writing: _the pursued and the pursuing_. “Gatsby turned alright in the end, did he not?”

“What, because of the booze?”

And you show her, sighing as you do so, the black clouds that Nick is so fond of pointing out in the book, in this age of dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> The quotations from the original are scattered here and there, but here are some that are quoted more or less directly: 
> 
> • _“[Gatsby] was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American—that comes, I suppose, with the absence of lifting work or rigid sitting in youth and, even more, with the formless grace of our nervous, sporadic games.”_
> 
> • _“It was dark now, and as we dipped under a little bridge I put my arm around Jordan’s golden shoulder and drew her toward me and asked her to dinner. Suddenly I wasn’t thinking of Daisy and Gatsby any more, but of this clean, hard, limited person, who dealt in universal scepticism, and who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm. A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: ‘There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.’”_
> 
> (All from chapter four.)


End file.
